Students flock to new UMass Dartmouth bioengineering major

The university's bioengineering department hopes to use its new facilities to increase its 2-year-old undergraduate program's course offerings and competitiveness.

MATT CAMARA

DARTMOUTH — Standing at the end of a dim, empty hallway deep in the Textile Building, UMass Dartmouth professor Christopher Brigham peered through a small rectangular window into the half-finished laboratory beyond.

"I'm excited to get in there," said Brigham, a recently hired bioengineering professor. "I'm starting to look at the sort of equipment I'll want to put in there."

The lab is just one of several throughout the building — once used extensively for materials science and textiles classes — that the university's new bioengineering department hopes to use to increase its 2-year-old undergraduate program's course offerings and competitiveness.

Department officials also hope the new facilities show the outside world that the bioengineering program — which filled the void left by the declining materials science programs that were once UMass Dartmouth staple — is ready to send graduates into the real world, said professor Tracie Ferreira, one of the campus' original bioengineering faculty.

The bioengineering field combines material from several scientific disciplines such as biology, mechanical engineering and more to prepare graduates for careers designing medical devices, artificial tissue, pharmaceuticals and more.

That cross-disciplinary training, along with the hands-on work UMass Dartmouth students can expect in the lab, will put graduates in a position to jockey for the best jobs. Hopefully, it will also act as a magnet for some of the state's sharpest high school students, Ferreira said.

"We want to say to employers 'We're giving you a product that thinks on their own,'" Ferreira said as her students performed cheek swabs on each other for an assignment Wednesday afternoon.

Faculty started the program to put UMass Dartmouth's extensive textiles and materials science expertise to use in a more "marketable" major as interest in those programs flagged, she said.

New students and transfers from other majors flocked to the program, boosting its enrollment to about 70 this year. The first graduates are expected to receive their diplomas next year, Ferreira said.

"It was logical for us to use our expertise to create a more marketable major," Ferreira said. "(We said) let's take the initiative and do this."

The students also took some initiative this past year, getting the UMass Dartmouth chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society nationally recognized.

"There's a lot of enthusiasm to make it something we're all proud of," said sophomore Danielle McDowell, who came to bioengineering after her job as an emergency responder in Boston sparked an interest in designing medical devices.

The chance to be the first graduates and to build the program into a nationally competitive one drives a number of students, as well. Being the first impression employers will get of UMass Dartmouth feels "intimidating," McDowell said, but other students said it provides an opportunity.

"That just gives me the motivation to do good here and expand the program," said sophomore Patrick McCarthy, who took up bioengineering as a path to medical school.

Finalizing courses, creating new offerings and a host of other challenges remain for the program, but building a powerful program is possible, said Brigham, who finished his doctorate at Tufts Medical School.

"I did my postdoc at MIT and I know we have what it takes," to make us competitive, he said.

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